“I believe I know most of it,” I replied.
She gave me an assessing look, then returned to work on the stocking. There was something removed about her, something a little unnerving, as if she were looking at you through the glass of a lens you could not see.
The stocking gave way and I slumped to the floor. It felt as if someone had shoved wires into my arms. I lay gasping for a long moment, tears of pain rolling down my face, and then I slowly rolled to my side and looked at her again. “Why are you here?” I asked her. “What do you want?”
“I will help your friend,” she said as she moved over to Nina and started cutting again. “This man,” she said as she worked. “With red hair. He is mad, of course, but it is more than that. Perhaps you’ll think I’m mad as well, but my father has him. My father’s ghost, that is. He’s taken the man’s mind.” She glanced at me. “I realize this makes no sense.”
I lay on my side and felt regular sensation gradually return to my arms and hands. “You would be surprised at what I think makes sense,” I said. “What about your brother? Mikael is here, too.”
She stopped her work and looked stricken. “Mikael.” For a second she seemed close to tears; then she turned back to Nina’s bound hands. “Yes, he’s here, too. But he’s a prisoner, just like these other men. He wants to be set free.” She bit her lip, swallowed her grief. “It was what he wanted in life as well. What we both wanted.”
I sat up. What we both wanted. I didn’t want to think about what those words meant. I knew the possibilities too well. “Did your father kill Mikael?”
“Yes. Out in the grass by the library. He executed Mikael with a rifle.”
“And you hid with your mother.”
“Not here, no.” Nina’s ties gave way, and Anna looked down at Nina’s sleeping form. “What happened to her?”
“He forced her to swallow drugs, and then he hit her.”
The answer didn’t seem to affect her. She touched Nina’s neck. “Her pulse is strong, but she is asleep. We’ll have to leave her here. He’ll be downstairs by now, trying to kill the others.”
“I don’t understand it,” I said, struggling to my feet. “Your father was a murderer. He killed Mikael in cold blood. Why did you run? Why are you here, in hiding?”
Anna stood and faced me. “Because if I’m found, I’ll be hanged. I’m a murderer, too. After Papa shot Mikael, I took his gun and I shot him myself.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Creeton was armed, and he could be anywhere by now; we needed to hurry. Still, I sat on the floor and stared at Anna Gersbach, the shock of her words washing over my body like hot water. “What did he do to you?” I managed. “Your father.”
Her face was closed, diffident. “We must go.”
“Wait,” I said. That was me, I wanted to tell her. That was me, too. Did you tell anyone? Did you cry? I wanted to know. I needed to know. “What did he do to you?”
Her gaze only glanced over mine, then moved away again. “Enough,” she said finally. “He did enough. Now, please get up. We have to move quickly.”
We crept down the staircase; we heard no sounds. “Creeton is after the patients,” I whispered to Anna. “He’ll go for the common room.”
She looked at me quizzically, and I realized she didn’t know what room I was talking about. What had the room been when the Gersbachs had been here, with all their beautiful furniture? A drawing room? A parlor? I had no time to find out. I pushed past her and led the way.
“How long have you been here?” I asked her as we moved down the stairs.
“A few days,” she said. “I think. I don’t know. We were in Switzerland, and Mother died. They gave me money . . . They told me I could go to France, or anywhere I wanted. But I have no home in France. My only home is here, and I thought it was empty. So I made my way here.”
So she’d been in hiding. How had she thought she could come home and live in Portis House as if nothing had happened? “You must have had a bit of a surprise when you arrived.”
“I suppose so.”
I frowned and glanced back at her, keeping my voice low. “You said they gave you money. Who is ‘they’？”
“Men in suits,” she replied, shrugging. “Lawyers, perhaps. I don’t remember.”
I glanced back at her again. For the first time it crossed my mind that Anna Gersbach, who had grown up with a father who had done “enough” to her, watched her father kill her brother, then killed her father herself, might not exactly be in her right mind. This was how she dealt with all of it, I thought: by keeping her distance, as if none of it was happening.
The men had been moved out of the main hall. It stood empty, but for a few crumpled blankets and a left-behind pillow. The light coming through the windows was chalky gray. Was it my imagination, or had the rain eased off a little?
I slipped down the corridor, Anna moving silently behind me. I started to run when I saw what stood in the doorway, pushed off-kilter. It was an empty wheelchair.
The furniture in the common room had been pushed aside, and mattresses had been placed on the floor. The sick men had been placed on them; some were sleeping, one was thrashing, and one groggily asked for water when he saw me. Douglas West sat on the floor twenty feet down the corridor, the halves of his legs flexed upward. He was walking slowly, very slowly, on his hands, pulling himself along the floor toward the door and his chair. He looked up at me. He had blood down one arm and the front of his shirt.
“Don’t worry,” he said as I rushed to him. “Most of it isn’t mine. I don’t think so, anyway.”
“Are you all right?” I asked stupidly. I squatted next to him. I had no idea how to get him into the chair; that was usually a job for Paulus. What happened?”
“They put me in charge of sentry duty,” he said. “That red-haired bastard came along, as we knew he would. He had a knife in his hand. I wheeled out as he came my way and jumped him, grabbed at the knife. He bloodied my lip, but at least I nicked him before I fell.” He stopped his strenuous progress long enough to wipe his forehead. “I got him in the shoulder, I think.”
“Do you need help?” Anna came forward. “Perhaps two of us can lift him.”
Douglas looked up at her. “Oh, hullo,” he said, taking in her unkempt dress and hair. “You’re a bit of all right, aren’t you?”
“This is Anna Gersbach,” I said.
“You don’t say? You’re pretty, but I have to say your family’s a bit of a muck. I don’t like to be the bearer of bad news, but your brother’s been haunting my nightmares for three months.”
Anna had been about to take one of his arms as I took the other, but she blinked at him. “My father is doing it,” she said. “He torments Mikael. I’m very sorry.”
He grunted as the two of us lifted him. I’d never known a man could be so heavy with muscle. “It’s all right,” he said, ever the gentleman. “I was already barking mad.” He looked at my face as we settled him into his chair and wheeled him back to the doorway of the common room. “Don’t fuss, Nurse Weekes. I’m terribly hard to kill.”